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The Power of Testing Memory -- Basic Research and Implications for Educational Practice
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, 2006
"... A powerful way of improving one’s memory for material is to be tested on that material. Tests enhance later retention more than additional study of the material, even when tests are given without feedback. This surprising phenomenon is called the testing effect, and although it has been studied by c ..."
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A powerful way of improving one’s memory for material is to be tested on that material. Tests enhance later retention more than additional study of the material, even when tests are given without feedback. This surprising phenomenon is called the testing effect, and although it has been studied by cognitive psychologists sporadically over the years, today there is a renewed effort to learn why testing is effective and to apply testing in educational settings. In this article, we selectively review laboratory studies that reveal the power of testing in improving retention and then turn to studies that demonstrate the basic effects in educational settings. We also consider the related concepts of dynamic testing and formative assessment as other means of using tests to improve learning. Finally, we consider some negative consequences of testing that may occur in certain circumstances, though these negative effects are often small and do not cancel out the large positive effects of testing. Frequent testing in the classroom may boost educational achievement at all levels of education.
Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis
- Psychological Bulletin
, 2006
"... A meta-analysis of the distributed practice effect was performed to illuminate the effects of temporal variables that have been neglected in previous reviews. This review found 839 assessments of distributed practice in 317 experiments located in 184 articles. Effects of spacing (consecutive massed ..."
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Cited by 139 (21 self)
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A meta-analysis of the distributed practice effect was performed to illuminate the effects of temporal variables that have been neglected in previous reviews. This review found 839 assessments of distributed practice in 317 experiments located in 184 articles. Effects of spacing (consecutive massed presentations vs. spaced learning episodes) and lag (less spaced vs. more spaced learning episodes) were examined, as were expanding inter-study interval effects. Analyses suggest that inter-study interval (ISI) and retention interval operate jointly to affect final test retention; specifically, the ISI producing maximal retention increased as retention interval increased. Areas needing future research and theoretical implications are discussed.
Practice and forgetting effects on vocabulary memory: An activationbased model of the spacing effect
- Cognitive Science
, 2005
"... An experiment was performed to investigate the effects of practice and spacing on retention of Japanese–English vocabulary paired associates. The relative benefit of spacing increased with increased practice and with longer retention intervals. Data were fitted with an activation-based memory model, ..."
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Cited by 61 (1 self)
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An experiment was performed to investigate the effects of practice and spacing on retention of Japanese–English vocabulary paired associates. The relative benefit of spacing increased with increased practice and with longer retention intervals. Data were fitted with an activation-based memory model, which proposes that each time an item is practiced it receives an increment of strength but that these increments decay as a power function of time. The rate of decay for each presentation depended on the activation at the time of the presentation. This mechanism limits long-term benefits from further practice at higher levels of activation and produces the spacing effect and its observed interactions with practice and retention interval. The model was compared with another model of the spacing effect (Raaijmakers, 2003) and was fit to some results from the literature on spacing and memory.
Spacing one’s study: Evidence for a metacognitive control strategy
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
, 2004
"... This article investigated individual control of spacing strategies during study. Three predictions were outlined: The spacing hypothesis suggests that people choose to space their study to improve long-term learning via the spacing effect. The massing hypothesis suggests that people choose to mass t ..."
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Cited by 34 (6 self)
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This article investigated individual control of spacing strategies during study. Three predictions were outlined: The spacing hypothesis suggests that people choose to space their study to improve long-term learning via the spacing effect. The massing hypothesis suggests that people choose to mass their study because of illusions of confidence during study. The metacognitive hypothesis suggests that people control their spacing schedules as a function of their metacognitive judgments of specific to-be-learned items. To test these hypotheses, the authors asked participants to study and make judgments of learning for cue–target pairs. Then, participants were given three choices; they could study the pair again immediately (massed), study the pair again after the entire list had been presented (spaced), or choose not to restudy (done). Results supported a metacognitively controlled spacing strategy—people spaced items that were judged to be relatively easy but massed items that were judged as relatively difficult. Students seem to have an immensely difficult time avoiding cramming. In the psychological literature, cramming has been better known as massing, in which the learner studies a particular to-be-learned item for a certain period of time with short rest periods, or lags, between study trials. By contrast, studying the to-be-learned item over several repetitions with longer lags be-tween them has been known as spacing. It has been found exten-sively that spacing leads to higher performance than does massing, particularly under conditions in which the delay between study and test is long rather than short (Bahrick, Bahrick, Bahrick, & Bahr-
How many memory systems? Evidence from aging
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
, 1989
"... older (ages 63-80) adults were given procedural, semantic, and episodic memory tasks. Repetition, lag, and codability were manipulated in a picture-naming task, followed by incidental memory tests. Relative to young adults, older adults exhibited lower levels of recall and recognition, but these epi ..."
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Cited by 31 (2 self)
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older (ages 63-80) adults were given procedural, semantic, and episodic memory tasks. Repetition, lag, and codability were manipulated in a picture-naming task, followed by incidental memory tests. Relative to young adults, older adults exhibited lower levels of recall and recognition, but these episodic measures increased similarly as a function of lag and repetition in both age groups. No age-related deficits emerged in either semantic memory (vocabulary, latency slopes, naming errors, and tip-of-the-tongue responses) or procedural memory (repetition priming magnitude and rate of decline). In addition to the age by memory task dissociations, the manipulation of codability produced slower naming latencies and more naming errors (semantic memory), yet promoted better recall and recognition (episodic memory). Finally, a factor analysis of 11 memory measures revealed three distinct factors, providing additional support for a tripartite memory model. The distinction between semantic and episodic memory proposed by Tulving in 1972 has generated a plethora of research, giving the dichotomy unassailable heuristic value. The semantic-episodic distinction has also generated consid-erable debate over its validity. (For summaries, see McKoon, Ratcliff, & Dell, 1986, and Tulving, 1984, with accompanying commentaries.) One source of data conspicuously neglected in these discussions is the ubiquitous finding of memory decrements in relation to normal aging. Thus, in the present research, age differences in memory serve as one vehicle for investigating the question of how many memory systems there are. Tulving's (1985) more recent classification calls for three memory systems. If measures tapping different types of mem-ory reveal similar patterns of loss in elderly adults, then the theory of multiple memory systems would be neither sup-ported nor disproved. On the other hand, if three classes of This article is based on a doctoral dissertation conducted at the University of Minnesota. Portions of this research were reported at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Minneapolis, November
Expanding retrieval practice promotes short-term retention, but equally spaced retrieval enhances long-term retention
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
, 2007
"... for promoting long-term retention relative to equally spaced retrieval practice. In Experiments 1 and 2, the authors found that expanding retrieval practice of vocabulary word pairs produced short-term benefits 10 min after learning, conceptually replicating Landauer and Bjork’s results. However, eq ..."
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Cited by 28 (3 self)
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for promoting long-term retention relative to equally spaced retrieval practice. In Experiments 1 and 2, the authors found that expanding retrieval practice of vocabulary word pairs produced short-term benefits 10 min after learning, conceptually replicating Landauer and Bjork’s results. However, equally spaced retrieval produced superior retention 2 days later. This pattern occurred both with and without feedback after test trials. In Experiment 3, the 1st test occurred immediately or after a brief delay, and repeated tests were expanding or equally spaced. Delaying the first test improved long-term retention, regardless of how the repeated tests were spaced. The important factor for promoting long-term retention is delaying initial retrieval to make it more difficult, as is done in equally spaced retrieval but not in expanding retrieval. Expanding the interval between repeated tests had little effect on long-term retention in 3 experiments.
Effects of variable encoding and spaced presentation on vocabulary learning
- Journal of Educational Psychology
, 1987
"... ] examined the applicability of the encoding variability hypothesis and the spacing phenomenon to vocabulary learning in five experiments. I manipulated encoding variability by varying the number of potential retrieval routes to the word meanings, using a one-sentence context condition, a three-sent ..."
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Cited by 27 (0 self)
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] examined the applicability of the encoding variability hypothesis and the spacing phenomenon to vocabulary learning in five experiments. I manipulated encoding variability by varying the number of potential retrieval routes to the word meanings, using a one-sentence context condition, a three-sentence context condition, and a no-context (definitions-only) control con-dition. I evaluated the spacing effect by presenting each word with or without intervening words. The results provided no evidence that the opportunity to establish multiple retrieval routes by means of contextual information is helpful to vocabulary learning, a conclusion supported unequivocally by all five experiments. By contrast, spaced presentations yielded substantially higher levels of learning than did massed presentations. I discuss the results largely in terms of educational concerns, including the utility of the learning-from-context approach to vocabulary learning. In the experiments reported in this article, 1 investigated the applicability of two principles derived from traditional verbal learning research—variable encoding and the spacing effect—to a real-world activity, vocabulary learning. More
Influences of retrieval processes on the spacing effect of free recall
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition
, 1977
"... A two-process theory of the spacing effect in free recall is presented and tested. The first process, differential organization, produces a positive correlation between the spacing of the presentations of repeated words and the number of different retrieval routes that can provide access to the word ..."
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Cited by 17 (0 self)
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A two-process theory of the spacing effect in free recall is presented and tested. The first process, differential organization, produces a positive correlation between the spacing of the presentations of repeated words and the number of different retrieval routes that can provide access to the words. The retrieval process interacts with the differential organization to control performance. If the cues used to retrieve the words provide approximately equal access to all retrieval routes, then the function relating spacing to recall will increase monotonically. If only selected retrieval routes are used, then the spacing function will be nonmonotonic. Evidence supporting this theory is that (a) the monotonic spacing function is most robust when subjects study the list using an organizational strategy, (b) cuing and directing retrieval with input words can result in a nonmonotonic effect of spacing when subjects have used an organizational strategy, and (c) directing retrieval by instructions about the order of recall can result in a nonmonotonic effect of spacing. The free-recall paradigm has been used extensively to investigate the effects of the spacing (lag) between the presentations of repeated items (D'Agostino & DeRemer, 1973; Madigan, 1969; Melton, 1970; Underwood, 1969). The predominate finding is that items given massed presentations, when the two presentations of a repeated item are contiguous, are recalled less often than items whose presentations are distributed. In addition, many investigators have reported that The first experiment is taken from a dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan in partial fulfillment for the requirements of the doctoral degree. Gratitude is expressed to the members of my
1 A Meta-Analysis of the Spacing Effect in Verbal Learning: Implications for Research on Advertising Repetition and Consumer Memory
"... The effects of repeated advertising exposures depend on the size of the interval, or space, between ad exposures. A meta-analysis of 97 verbal learning studies identified several stimulus characteristics and learning context factors that interact with stimulus spacing to facilitate memory for repeat ..."
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Cited by 16 (0 self)
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The effects of repeated advertising exposures depend on the size of the interval, or space, between ad exposures. A meta-analysis of 97 verbal learning studies identified several stimulus characteristics and learning context factors that interact with stimulus spacing to facilitate memory for repeated information. The majority of the findings are consistent with the predictions of two enhanced processing explanations of learning – the retrieval hypothesis and the reconstruction hypothesis. These two hypotheses predict that an effective repetition strategy should encourage incidental processing during one presentation of the material and intentional processing during the other presentation of the material, but the hypotheses differ about the optimal order of these two types of processing. Thus, the most effective repetition strategy may be a combination of spaced exposures that alternate in terms of media that is involving (e.g., television commercials) and less involving (e.g., billboards, product placements).4 Repetition is a fundamental advertising strategy that can be used to achieve several goals (Pechmann and Stewart 1989; Ray and Sawyer 1971a; Unnava and Burnkrant 1991). Repetition increases the likelihood a target market will attend to an ad, remember its content, and be persuaded by its message. At the most fundamental level, increased memory for a brand name or
When two meanings are better than one: Modeling the ambiguity advantage using a recurrent distributed network
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
, 1994
"... Ambiguous words are processed more quickly than unambiguous words in a lexical decision task despite the fact that each sense of an ambiguous word is less frequent than the single sense of unambiguous words of equal frequency or familiarity. In this computer simulation study, we examined the effects ..."
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Cited by 15 (0 self)
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Ambiguous words are processed more quickly than unambiguous words in a lexical decision task despite the fact that each sense of an ambiguous word is less frequent than the single sense of unambiguous words of equal frequency or familiarity. In this computer simulation study, we examined the effects of different assumptions of a fully recurrent connectionist model in accounting for this processing advantage for ambiguous words. We argue that the ambiguity advantage effect can be accounted for by distributed models if (a) the least mean square (LMS) error-correction algorithm rather than the Hebbian algorithm is used in training the network and (b) activation of the units representing the spelling rather than the meaning is used to index word recognition times. An important advantage of computational models is that the underlying assumptions of the model must be explicitly formulated. This explicit formulation allows comparison of assumptions that are highly similar. In some cases, virtually identical assumptions can give rise to qualitative differences rather than merely quantitative differences. In this article,
